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It is beautiful, rich, famous, but not authentic. On 28th January, Sotheby’s will be auctioning in New York a work of rare beauty, with an estimate between 300,000 and 500,000 dollars (equivalent to about 209,000-348,000 euros). It is a female portrait, better known as La Belle Ferronnière, copy of the very famous homonymous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The ambitious facsimile was for a long time at the centre of a heated debate and also inspired the plot of a book published last year. The subject of both paintings, Leonardo’s original and the copy that will be at auction, is a woman portrayed in three-quarters profile, traditionally identified as the mistress of Ludovico il Moro, Lucrezia Crivelli. The title, which probably refers to the jewel-ribbon that women used to wear on their forehead in those days, is fruit of a cataloguing error made in the late 18th century, and appears in full in the portrait of the Lady with the ermine in the top left corner.
The wrong attribution of the sought-after copy, during the Twenties, generated a long series of artistic and news events which aroused great interest and publicity, it was closely followed by the Time and the New York Times, it fascinated for decades art lovers and is the subject of a recently published book by John Brewer, The American Leonardo: A Tale of Obsession, Art and Money.
The Belle Ferronnière was given as a wedding gift to Harry Hahn, American soldier during the first world war, by the grandmother of his French bride Andrée. The painting – believed to be a Leonardo – was authenticated by an expert of French art who, however, was not very knowledgeable about the Italian Renaissance. So after returning to America, the Hahns, with their confidence and a certification of authenticity, started negotiations with Kansas City Art Institute to sell the work and increase their wealth with 250,000 dollars. However, the idyll was interrupted by Sir Joseph Duveen, world leader of the art market and expert figure who had contributed to the fame of some American collections, such as the ones of Andrew Mellon, Sr.John Pierpont Morgan, and John D.Rockefeller Jr. When the news about the sale of an original Leonardo broke out, a reporter from a New York paper called Joseph Duveen in the middle of the night to get his opinion about the painting in question. The eminent expert answered that it was definitely a fake, causing a long legal battle and a series of memorable vicissitudes. Indeed, Harry Hahn’s deal with Kansas City Art Institute went up in smoke, shattering the dreams of ambition and wealth connected to the beautiful picture: Andrée Hahn sued Duveen for libel and damage for 500, 000 dollars. Not only Duveen was accused by the Hahns of spreading a false opinion, but also of acting in bad faith, driven by a personal advantage, which was to increase his own popularity on the art market.
Taken by Andrée Hahn to the supreme court of the state of New York, in 1929, Duveen not only claimed that the image was not a work by Leonardo, but that it had not even been realised by one of his assistants or by a Renaissance master, and was instead a later copy.
However, the dealer, who went to trial with a legion of top experts who shared his opinion, was not able to convince the jury, armed only with respectable opinions without concrete proof. So the luminary of antiques, brought to his knees by a jury that was not very favourable towards the attitude of intellectual superiority of his procession – and faced with the risk of a new trial – settled an extra-judicial agreement with the Hahns which cost him 60,000 dollars. Duveen continued his activity as a prominent figure in the international market, the painting ended up in a vault and Harry Hahn, in 1946, published his story about the trial, highlighting the unfairness – according to him – of his venerable antagonist. In the second half of the 20th century several attempts to sell the work failed and the painting stayed off the artistic scene. In spite of the outcome of this adventure, the curiosity about the true authorship of the work continued: in 1993 one of the top experts of Leonardo’s art examined La Belle Ferronnière and concluded that it had not been realised by the great Italian genius, but was a copy realised in the first half of the 17th century. Recent tests carried out on the pigments confirm this hypothesis and support the use of popular materials in France before 1750.
At last the beautiful 18th-century duplicate is free from a heavy burden which lasted eighty years and ends a chapter, trying to take on its own autonomous life, without the need to be associated to Leonardo da Vinci and far from the clamour of gossips. Now this Belle Ferronnière is simply an excellent fruit of 17th-century French painting, which may be worth half a million dollars.
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